So I know practically nothing about houses having rented for many years, just bought a house and was told by my inspector the panel is only a 70 amp panel and will need to be upgraded before I go to install AC.
I took him at his word, and had one AC consult, mentioning this to the guy he looked at my panel and agreed it needed an upgrade.
He gave a terrible quote ($5500 for a 3 ton goodman AC install without the electrical work, no ducting work necessary), so I got somebody else to give me a quote.
Now here's the problem: Fellow comes over and says I have a 150 amp panel and there's room (which I can see) for a couple more breakers on it, and gives me a considerably better AC quote (3500 for a lennox 3 ton 14 seer, all the same bells and whistles).
So now I'm thinking, considering how terrible the quote was from the first consult, perhaps he was just trying to squeeze even more money out of me? Why did my inspector tell me it was a 70 amp panel?
I look at the panel and there's like 6 or 8 15/20 amp breakers on it as well as a 30 amp double-breaker thingy (not sure if this is 30 per or 30 total) and a 50 amp double-breaker thingy.
I'll get a picture when I get home to post here, but off hand my question is:
Is it accurate to say I definitely have over a 70 amp panel due to the sum of amps on breakers in there right now? Is the sum of those little labels on the breakers make up my panels current amperage?
I look online for 70 amp panel and it's this tiny dinky thing with 3 breakers on it..
Edit: Here are the pictures, if this is not a 70 amp can anybody identify the amps?
Appearances to me are the diagram on the box does not match the actual panel, as the panel has 20 breaker spots (as I read it) while the diagram shows 14. And yes, I realize it's missing a main breaker, so I included the other two pieces I understand identify the max amp load; the conduit and the meter.
M A I N . R A T I N G S
Area. The 70A is the max of any one branch circuit breaker. You can have five of those. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Jan 10 '19 at 23:16